


lipservice

by tonyang (kurusui)



Category: Oh My Girl (Band)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 15:10:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11061585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurusui/pseuds/tonyang
Summary: 1. we’re never gonna get to where we want to go without a little endurance and a lot of sacrifice / 2. when Jiho stands in front of her, everything just becomes a little more unsteady.





	1. lipservice

**Author's Note:**

> hi everyone! i basically wrote this for the sole purpose of being able to promote the oh my girl summer fic exchange, signups for which are open until June 10th!! please consider signing up/inviting friends to, [the last one](https://ohmygirlexchange.dreamwidth.org/tag/2016) was a lot of fun and we'd love new writers to join. 
> 
> here's [our twitter](https://twitter.com/omgficchallenge), and the [rules](https://ohmygirlexchange.dreamwidth.org/6331.html), and the [signup post!](https://ohmygirlexchange.dreamwidth.org/6570.html) pls ask if you have any questions and i hope to see you sign up ♡

 

Yoobin notes on an awfully rainy Saturday that her biggest regrets in life come when she least expects them. She imagines them to be like doing poorly on a final in her best class, or saying a halfhearted goodbye to her family before a long distance comes between them. They’re not supposed to be forgetting to bring headphones during a car trip.

She braces herself during the prechorus -

“I’M VERY VERY GOOD!” Seunghee and Jiho shout at the top of their lungs, bouncing in their seats. Shiah sings along in her cheery voice, shaking her hands in cute fists.

(Yoobin is too responsible for those things to bother her. She studies hard and when she doesn’t do well, she knows it’s her own fault. And she loves her family too much not to call them up every week or so. When Yoobin gets to see her brother, she hugs him as long as she can until he pushes her off. She knows herself well enough to prepare for the future.

That leaves the only regrets left to be the ones she can’t predict.)

“Please turn the music down,” Yoobin pleads to Hyojung, sitting in the front seat of the van. She complies, but her definition of turning the volume down is from 100 to 95. It doesn’t help.

“We can’t hear because it’s raining and we’re on the highway,” Jiho says sourly as the song ends, turning to the backseat to face Yoobin. “Think of us too.”

Yoobin looks her in the eyes, locking her gaze. “I am thinking of you.”

Jiho blinks affectedly. “Umm.”

“I’m thinking of how upset you’re gonna be if I annoy you the whole way to Busan.”

“Turn it down to 90!” Jiho yells.

“I miss Hyejin unnie,” Yoobin says, putting her hand to her forehead. “The only person who could put a stop to this.” Besides the manager, but it’s only too obvious he prefers drowning out their endless chatter with music. On her right Yewon is somehow sleeping on a sheep neckpillow - poor baby, Yoobin whispers, running her finger across the dark circles on Yewon’s face. She must be exhausted to be knocked out in the middle of this chaos. On her left Mihyun pretends to be just as frustrated, but ends up jamming to 1 of 1. Yoobin really has no allies in this world.

The book she was reading, once open in her lap, falls to the floor of the car when they go over a metal grate and closes shut. There goes that plan. She was really trying to hold back, but evidently there’s nothing left to entertain her but this.

“Excuse me? Kim Jiho-ssi?” Yoobin taps rapidly on the shoulder in front of her. Jiho takes a while to show any indication that she’s listening, so she starts pressing harder until Jiho flinches.

She turns around with a dramatized glare, stretching the seatbelt strap until her hands can grip the top of her seat. “Do I not have impeccable music taste, Bae Yoobin. This is our best fun playlist yet.”

“Maybe I could appreciate it if I wasn’t trying to live a peaceful life.”

“Oh my goodness our Arin is so cute when she’s sleeping,” Jiho exclaims in a very loud whisper, purposefully ignoring the sarcasm coming from the girl next to her.

“What would I give to be her right now,” Yoobin comments.

(Yewon is... lucky in some ways, and unlucky in others. None of them ever deny her anything because they just love her shamelessly. But then they all baby her, probably too much, and Hyojung is obsessed with her, which is kind of a downside when you look at it from a day-to-day perspective.

For Yoobin, the way she sees it is like this: Yoobin can shower affection onto anyone because that’s part of her personality. On the other hand, everyone can shower affection on Yewon because she’s cute and adorable so it just makes sense. No one bats an eye if someone (usually Hyojung) shouts “Arin I love you!” for no reason, that’s normal now. It doesn’t work like that for the rest of them.)

“Sleep, I’m sure Mihyun unnie wouldn’t mind lending you a shoulder.” Mihyun smiles tiredly but doesn’t fight back, partly because she’s too nice to mind at all and partly because Jiho’s too much, always.

“Can’t sleep because of you,” she sings.  

“Just go listen to ballads...”

“I forgot my headphones,” Yoobin finally gets to say. This feels like the punchline of the whole afternoon. This explains all of her fake-annoyed behavior and justifies her petulance. Jiho will feel bad for her and pout for a second and say “oh,” before going back to teasing her and singing Cheer Up, and then asking Hyojung to lower the volume to 30.

“You should have asked me for mine,” Jiho says. Yoobin just stares at her, gritting her teeth. Jiho never makes anything easy.

“You should have just _offered_ me yours.”

“I’m just nothing,” Jiho says airily in English, shrugging.

Yoobin rolls her eyes incredulously. “Go AWAY. You’re so annoying.”

“I can’t, we’re trapped in this car for another hour and 15 minutes.” Jiho smiles sweetly and turns back to face forward. Yoobin, laughing, wants to wring her neck.

“Here,” Jiho says as Yoobin leans forward, just to see up front through the windshield. The wipers are working at the fastest setting, and all she can see is dark gray sky and cars whose colors are dulled by the lack of sunlight. In the midst of that distraction she’s hit in the face with something small and white.

“I’m so sorry!” Jiho’s mouth is open wide and Shiah giggles at Yoobin’s stunned expression, picking the earphones up off the seat and handing them to her.

“Thanks,” Yoobin mumbles, quickly plugging them into her phone and pulling up her drama OSTs playlist. Like this she probably can fall asleep despite the noise outside.

Seunghee speaks across the car in hushed tones to Hyojung. Shiah’s playing a game on the tablet. “Sleep well,” Jiho says, turning around again. 

“That’s cute lip service but it doesn’t mean anything to me,” Yoobin answers with her eyes closed, sticking her tongue out with the hope that Jiho’s seeing. She presses play on her music.

“You’re welcome,” Jiho says quietly, watching as her head falls on Mihyun’s sleeve. Yoobin doesn’t look up.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. visage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> when Jiho stands in front of her, everything just becomes a little more unsteady.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i foolishly wrote this august 20 in the hopes that it could be used as a pinch hit but 1) i wrote it for myself not for a recipient and 2) the effort i put into this was way less than anyone deserved. in the end it sat in my drafts until now.
> 
> thank you so much to bear for betaing this for me!!

3, 2, 1.

They’re in the front and cameras are everywhere. This is their first time at one of these year end events and that means a lot. The significance of their firsts as a group have never slipped past Yoobin. From their debut stage to the variety show invite, and now to their biggest show yet. They’ve made it far enough to be here.

In her excitement, she slips her arms around Jiho’s waist, hugging tightly. The lights flash in her eyes, and when she can see clearly again Jiho has shifted uncomfortably in her grip.

“Don’t do it,” Jiho mouths as Yoobin’s hands have already pulled back, withdrawing to herself again.

She nods.

 

✧

 

Jiho has always kind of dragged her into things without really... hm. Meaning it. 

(The fansigns, the fansigns. Those are always the most dangerous places.)

“And now Binnie,” Jiho says with a smirk. Yoobin has come to expect this of Jiho, but it never fails to catch her off guard.

“No,” she says, pretending to refuse.

“Aegyo,” Hyojung tells her. “Aegyo!” she shouts to the crowd of fans, and then at that point they’re chanting and Yoobin has nothing to defend herself with.

Jiho laughs but Yoobin thinks it’s vexing that she reacts the same way to everyone else the way she does to Yoobin, after all of what she does to her. 

She doesn’t know why Jiho feels so comfortable pushing her around and then forgetting about her. Just because she’s Jiho, probably. 

The funny thing is that Jiho has the most difficult time being serious, but when she is it’s just so sincere. The fingers that lock with the fans’ own. The  _ I’m so glad you came _ and  _ Please make sure to eat all your meals _ and  _ Study hard, it’s really important, _ even though Jiho herself chose to put off her college entrance.

As they walk backstage someone yells “Binnie, I love you!” and she turns back to wave and give them finger hearts. Somehow this turns into a regret. The next day when she does Twitter reconnaissance, her smile in the fantakens proves to be really stunning. But as she follows the other girls to exit, Jiho is in her way, having stayed back to wait for her. 

“You’re so cute, Binnie,” she says, taunting her in a joking way (of course). They are only halfway back stage - maybe someone heard them. Maybe not.

“You’re cuter,” Yoobin shoots back, and it sounds too real. Jiho is at a standstill and swallows.

Yoobin tries not to take the recoil to heart.

 

✧

 

The tap on her shoulder frightens her, but she hears a comforting laugh from behind.

“Hi, Bae Yoobin,” Jiho says, poking her head above Yoobin’s shoulder. “Whatcha doing?”

She lets out a long breath. On the tablet in her hand, the headphones wrapped neatly around it, is the evidence of her last text conversation with Yebin, her closest confidant as of late. She doesn’t usually delete anything, not when the passcode is a secret from everyone else, but when Jiho stands in front of her everything just becomes a little more unsteady. “Hey, Jiho. Not much, really.” 

“I want to get delivery for dinner. Tired of Hyojung-unnie’s fried sausages,” she says, grinning. “She really bought too many last week.”

“Me too,” she agrees, but the practicality in her is saying Seunghee already has a plan for the leftovers in their fridge.

“Oh, but-” Jiho pauses. “I guess we’re gonna have something homecooked tonight too. Remember Yewonie’s bet with Hyojung-unnie...” Right. That was it. “I want ice cream.” 

“We should go out to the supermarket,” she says, and it comes out a little more earnestly than she meant it to. Jiho looks amused.

“Sure,” she says. And Jiho looks happy to go, with her. But Yoobin feels some kind of twinge inside of her, a feeling like desperation. It’s not pleasant.

The market is two blocks down from the closest intersection to the WM building. Despite Yoobin’s careful “just a fudge bar, or something,” they’re kind of dazed when they see the snacks. She should have known better, and honestly something in her did, but ignored the feeling anyway.  Jiho throws bags and bags of chips into the basket, and when Yoobin comes up to her with bottles of juice gripped in her hands, the basket is full. 

“Jiho.”

“What?” Yoobin feels herself getting pulled into some kind of hug, but it’s really just Jiho’s arm around her neck. Jiho laughs to distract her. It works, and Yoobin finds the proximity ironic, and unfair.

 

✧

 

After enough leading and subsequent rejection, Yoobin just stops. 

She’s gripping Jiho’s arm and watching the girls play field games after they’ve both lost. They’re standing on the sidelines and then Shiah wins, so the round is over. Jiho just walks away, distracted, enamoured by one of the others cheering. Jiho’s long hair slips right through her fingertips. It is enough of this, Yoobin decides, when she is staring at Jiho’s shining face for too long without even realizing it.

Her facial features are really pretty and there have been a lot of times, especially when they just debuted, that she felt proud to know someone this beautiful. To have trained and hung out with and got to know such a stunning person with a good heart, who she then gets to show off to the world. But therein lies the facts. Jiho is not hers.

Down the line, it ends up manifesting itself in a greater gap between them, suppressed comments and a subdued appreciation for Jiho’s effervescence. When Jiho shows no signs of any effect on her, no response to the change in Yoobin’s attitude, she accepts it and avoids all of this  _ trying. _

And yet now, as her gaze follows Jiho while she walks away, Yoobin keeps on smiling.

 

✧

 

Yoobin wakes up at 5AM. There’s no schedule today, so it must have been just reflexive, just habit. She rolls over in bed and yanks her iPod off the charger, swipes at her lockscreen. There are 26 new messages in her family’s group chat, but they’re about some goings on in her hometown she has no familiarity with, so she closes out and tosses it on the floor.

She can’t get back to sleep.

When Yoobin gets back from her walk outside, the beeping melody of the apartment door unlocking startles someone at the kitchen island. 

“Hey.”

Jiho is stirring a cup of hot cereal and her hair is unkempt as it’s ever been. Yoobin thinks she had no idea someone was going to come in the kitchen at this time and made no effort to look presentable. It looks like she’s wearing Mihyun’s bathrobe? Anyway, none of the girls would have judged her. They’re used to a lot worse.

“Hi,” Yoobin says back. “You’re up earlier than usual.” She is five meters away from the shoes she discarded on the entryway floor. And for once, she tries to act unaware of the distance she’s maintaining between them.

“You didn’t tell anyone you were gone, did you?” It really sounds uncharacteristically like an accusation.

“I texted manager-unnie,” she answers, shrugging. Jiho widens her eyes and then shrugs too, sipping her drink.

“Seunghee-unnie would have flipped out if she discovered you were missing like that.”

“Glad you found me first, then.” Yoobin smiles weakly and hangs up her windbreaker in the front closet. 

“Well,” Jiho says slowly. “You should still say something.”  _ You were supposed to be sleeping, _ Yoobin thinks, and that’s when she notices the intent hiding away in Jiho’s voice. 

Or maybe she’s just delusional.

As Yoobin approaches the island to get a banana out of the wire basket, Jiho jumps off the bar stool and places her mug in the sink.

“I’m going back to sleep,” she says, making no eye contact.

“Goodnight,” Yoobin answers. Jiho laughs in response, because the sky is brightening outside. Jiho sleeps in the other room, so when the door closes shut Yoobin has no reason not to go back to bed too.

Both of them breathe a sigh of relief, from something.


End file.
